brain droppings-george carlin

i’m noticing some repeating bits here, but that’s to be expected from a comedian. i’ve also noticed all the things that adam corolla, and for that matter, jerry seinfeld “borrowed” from the man. on that note-jiminy glick is the shit. so is martin short in damages. the more i read carlin, the more crochety i get, i’m just sayin’. this one’s for all the middle-aged ladies that come whining to my unsympathetic face about how nobody has the good larabars. ken muthafuckin’ lee:

“Then we have the eating disorders. Is it really a surprise that with all our pathological feeding habits Americans have eating disorders? Who makes worse dietary decisions? Who wastes more food?….And all of this conspicuous, deliberate waste takes place in the midst of global malnutrition and starvation. No wonder fucked-up teenage girls don’t want to eat.
Here’s another wonderful irony: with all our supposed superiority in food production, we provide our people with far higher rates of stroke, heart attack, colon cancer, and other diet diseases than most ‘inferior’ Third-World food economies do. But don’t you worry, those folks are catching up; social pathologies are our biggest export. And so, in a curious way, cancer turns out to be catching, after all.” (255)

“Most outsiders can’t handle New York, so they wind up back in Big Loins, Arkansas, badmouthing The City for the rest of their lives. Actually, most of the people who run New York down have never been there. And if they ever went, we would destroy them in nine minutes. People hate New York, because that’s where the action is, and they know it’s passing them by.” (18)

sounds like my city…

“History has given us other impressive names from simpler times: Edward the Fair, Charles the Bold, Catherine the Great. These days, they would be Edward the Abuse Victim, Charles the Underachiever, and Catherine the Recovering Codependent.” (26)

“I couldn’t believe how much time I wasted watching any old piece of shit ballgame that happened to show up on TV. I must have thought there was some inborn male obligation to tune in and root every time a bunch of sweaty assholes got together to mix it up in a stadium somewhere.” (57)

“The athletes are the only people in sports who count; they’re the only ones who are indispensable. Everyone else is superfluous. Think about it. The entire pro-sports sewer began because groups of men got together and played these games in parks, vacant lots, and gyms simply for the fun of it. No money involved; just personal bets. And if today, all the owners, media, and sports fans suddenly disappeared, the athletes would simply go back to the parks, vacant lots, and gyms and play the games by themselves. No one else is necessary.” (59)

“A lot of these people who keep a gun at home for safety are the same ones who refuse to wear a seat belt.” (90)

“Shopping and buying and getting and having comprise the Great American Addiction. No one is immune: When the underclass riots in this country, they don’t kill policemen and politicians, they steal merchandise. How embarrassing.” (96)

“There’s really no harm reviewing the past from time to time; knowing where you’ve been is part of knowing where you are, and all that happy horseshit. But the American media have an absolute fixation on this. They rob us of the present by insisting on the past. If they were able, I’m sure they would pay equal attention to the future. Trouble is, they don’t have any film on it.
And so, on television news there is, oddly, very little emphasis on the present; on today’s actual news. The present exists only in thirty-second stories built around eight-second sound bites. Remember, ‘sound bite’ is their phrase. That’s what they give you. Just a bite. No chewing, no digestion, no nourishment. Malnutrition.” (111)